Jean-Philippe Rameau · section 2 of 109

Preface

Whatever progress music has made down to our time, it seems that the mind has become less curious about investigating its true principles as the ear has grown more sensitive to the wonderful effects of this art. Thus one may say that reason has lost some of its rights in music while experience has acquired a certain authority.

The writings that remain to us from the ancients show clearly enough that reason alone gave them the means to discover most of music's properties. Yet although experience still leads us to approve most of the rules they gave us, we now neglect all the advantages we could draw from reason in favor of experience gained through practice alone.

Experience may give us an initial understanding of music's different properties, but by itself it cannot reveal their principle with all the precision that reason requires. The conclusions drawn from it are often false, or at least leave us in a doubt that only reason can dispel. For example, how could we prove that our music is more perfect than that of the ancients when it no longer seems capable of the effects they attributed to theirs? Would we say that the more familiar things become, the less surprise they cause, and that the admiration they may inspire at their beginning gradually diminishes as we grow accustomed to them, until it becomes mere amusement? That would at most assume equality, not superiority. But suppose that, by setting out an evident principle and drawing sound and certain conclusions from it, we can show that our music has reached the highest degree of perfection and that the ancients fell far short of it. (See Book II, Chapter XXI, on this subject.) We shall then know where we stand and understand much better the force of the preceding reflection. Knowing the limits of the art in this way, we shall devote ourselves to it more willingly. Those with superior taste and genius for it will no longer fear that they lack the knowledge needed to succeed. In a word, the light of reason, by thus dispelling the doubts into which experience may plunge us at any moment, will give us reliable grounds for the success we may hope for in this art.

If modern musicians—that is, those since Zarlino*—had applied themselves, as the ancients did, to explaining the reasons for their practice, they would have put an end to many prejudices unfavorable to them. This would even have freed them from the prejudices with which they are still filled and which they find so difficult to abandon. Experience is therefore too favorable to them: it seduces them, in a sense, since it causes them to take so little care to study thoroughly the beauties it reveals to them each day. Their knowledge is useful to themselves alone; they lack the gift of communicating it. And because they do not realize this, they are often more astonished that others do not understand them than that they fail to make themselves understood. This reproach is somewhat sharp, I admit. But I state it as one that I may still deserve myself, despite all I have been able to do to avoid it.

Be that as it may, I would always wish it to have on them the effect it has had on me. It is also chiefly to revive the noble emulation that formerly prevailed that I have ventured to share my new researches with the public. I seek to give this art all the simplicity natural to it, so that the mind may grasp its properties as easily as the ear perceives them.

* Zarlino, a celebrated writer on music who wrote about 150 years ago. The works on the same subject published after his offer only very feeble copies of him.

One person cannot exhaust a subject as profound as this. Despite all his care, it is almost impossible for him not to overlook something. But at least the new discoveries he can add to what has already appeared on the subject open paths for those able to go farther.

Music is a science that must have certain rules. These rules must be drawn from an evident principle, and we can scarcely know that principle without the aid of mathematics. I must therefore confess that, despite all the experience I may have acquired through practicing music for a considerable number of years, it was only with the help of mathematics that my ideas became clear. Light then replaced an obscurity of which I had previously been unaware. Whereas I had not known how to distinguish a principle from a rule, this principle soon presented itself to me with as much simplicity as self-evidence. The consequences it then supplied revealed so many rules, which must therefore refer back to it. The true meaning of these rules, their proper application, their relationships, the order they should follow among themselves—the simpler always introducing the less simple, step by step—and finally the choice of terms: all these things, which I had not previously known, unfolded in my mind with such clarity and precision that I could not help agreeing with a wish once expressed to me when I was praising the perfection of our modern music: that the knowledge of this century's musicians might equal the beauty of their compositions. It is therefore not enough to feel the effects of a science or an art. One must also understand them in a way that makes them intelligible to others. This has been my chief concern in the body of this work, which I have divided into four books.

THE FIRST contains a summary of the relationships of sounds, consonances, dissonances, and chords in general. The principle of harmony is discovered there in a single sound, and its most essential properties are explained. We see, for example, how by its first division this single sound generates another, its octave, which seems to be one with it; how it then makes use of this octave to form every chord; that all these chords consist only of this fundamental principle, its third, its fifth, and its seventh; and that the power of the octave gives rise to all the variety of which these chords are capable. Several other properties are also found there: admittedly less interesting for practice, but nevertheless necessary to lead us to it. Everything is demonstrated in a fairly simple manner.

THE SECOND BOOK concerns theory and practice equally. The principle is now represented in the musical part called the bass, to which the epithet fundamental is added. All its properties are explained, together with those of the intervals, chords and modes that depend solely on it. The book also discusses everything that can help make music perfect in performance. For this purpose, when appropriate, it recalls the reasoning of the preceding book, experience, and the authority of the best writers in this field—without, however, sparing them when they may have been mistaken. In the new ideas presented here, the aim is to satisfy the learned by reason; those who trust only their ears by experience; and those too deferential to their teachers' rules by revealing the errors those rules may contain. Finally, the aim is to prepare readers to accept freely the prescribed rules, which are developed in order and at greater length in the following books.

THE THIRD BOOK contains a particular method for learning composition in a very short time. It has already been tested. But since in such matters people are seldom persuaded except by their own experience, I shall say no more about that. I shall merely ask those unfamiliar with the method to examine the results it can produce before opposing it. A person who wishes to learn cares little about the manner of instruction, provided that he succeeds.

No rules have yet appeared that teach composition in the perfection it has reached today. Indeed, there is no accomplished practitioner who does not sincerely admit that he owes almost all his knowledge to experience alone. When he tries to give that knowledge to others, he often finds himself obliged to add to his lessons the proverb familiar to musicians: Cætera docebit usus—practice will teach the rest. It is true that certain perfections depend on genius and taste, for which experience is even more beneficial than knowledge itself. But this does not prevent a thorough understanding from always being needed to guide us, lest experience deceive us—even if only so that we may refer the new things it leads us to produce to their true principle. Moreover, such understanding allows genius and taste to be put to work; without it, they would often become useless talents. I therefore thought I should seek means of making it easier and quicker to attain a perfection that had so far been reached only through practical experience. I begin by providing a reasoned, precise and distinct understanding of the whole of harmony through the exposition of just three intervals. From them arise two principal chords and the entire progression of the fundamental bass, which at the same time determines that of the other parts. Everything else thus depends on this understanding alone, which can be acquired on a first reading of the book, as one can easily ascertain.

THE FOURTH BOOK contains rules of accompaniment for both harpsichord and organ. It sets out hand position, the arrangement of the fingers, and everything that can help one acquire practical skill as quickly as possible.

The substance of these rules can equally serve instruments on which accompaniment is played in much the same way as on the harpsichord.

These last two books have much in common. They will therefore both be useful to those who wish to concentrate only on the practice of composition or on that of accompaniment. Nor would it be amiss to consult the second book if one wishes to leave nothing unknown, assuming that I have forgotten nothing. For I do not doubt that others may improve on my work, despite the care I have taken to let nothing escape me, as my lengthy discussions and repetitions show well enough. This fault arises as much from my desire to make things clear and intelligible as from the weakness of my genius. As for the first book, it is in a sense unnecessary for practice. Readers may use it as they think fit. I placed it at the beginning of this treatise only to provide the proof of everything the work contains concerning harmony.

Because the demands of my position made it impossible for me to supervise the printing of this work, I was obliged to reread it with fresh care. I found that I needed to make several changes and necessary corrections, which appear in a supplement at the end. I have placed two tables at the beginning: one of the subjects treated in this work, and another explaining the terms whose understanding is necessary. These serve as an introduction to the whole work, which I dedicate to the public.

The references to Zarlino's Harmonic Institutions are to the Venice edition of 1573.